


Desert Butterfly

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [5]
Category: Country Music RPF, Orville Peck - Fandom
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe, Arizona - Freeform, Gen, M/M, Music, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Behind the Mask: Arizona, 1923, and Orville Peck has an invitation to put on a show.
Relationships: Orville Peck/Original Character
Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709713
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Desert Butterfly

There's a low ridge of hills beyond the scrubland, and when Joshua raises his eyes, it's there he looks for salvation. The sun rises over those hills. Dawn will come. The sky will lighten, the stars will fade, sunlight will strike across the desert. 

The devil will be silenced.

But it is night still, and the devil plays on. 

The devil rides into Winona Springs on a palomino pony. He comes out of the desert, wearing dusty boots and worn chaps, a black hat, a buckskin jacket with a fringe, and a scarlet mask. There's a bedroll strapped to his saddle and a guitar strapped to his back. It's three o'clock in the afternoon, hot as hell although without the pitchforks, and devil must have been thirsty, because first he leads his pony round the side of the store, where Miss Maybelline Jones keeps a bucket of water in the shade, and then he goes into the bar, where Miss Alethea Jones keeps a barrel or four of sour mash whiskey and a bottomless jug of lemonade. 

Joshua knows he's the devil by the glint in his eye, which is wicked, and the swing of his hips, which is sinful and shameless. He sidles around the corner and pokes the palomino pony to see if it grows horns, but the pony rolls an eye at him and stomps one of its hoofs on his foot and keeps it there.

"You want some help, son?" says Tim Jepson, who works out at Circle K and has no business being in town on the Lord's Day. 

"Umph," says Joshua.

"C'mon up, sweetheart," says Tim, and clucks at the pony. "Move yerself."

The pony huffs, and shifts its weight, which might set Joshua free but hurts even more as the blood flows back into his foot. Joshua hops, biting his tongue, fetches up against the wall of the store with a bang, falls over his own foot, and rolls into the side of the bar with a horrible thud, which is possibly the scholarly weight of the bible in his back pocket but more likely the plank on the water butt hitting the dust. "Urrgh," Joshua says. He strips off his boot and kneads at his toes, which stifles the pain a bit but frees up the holes in his socks. And then he looks up, and finds he's amassed a whole congregation without even trying. There's the two cowhands and the cook from Keighley's, Mr McNaught and his wife and their two daughters, both of them indecent as Babylonians in pants, and shameless with it, Señor Jesús Maria Medina in his Sunday best with the silver medallions, and Señor Jesús Maria Medina's cousin Señor Rámon Ramírez in his, with the silver medallions and the feathers in his hat. And half a dozen unrighteous townsfolk and countryfolk, besides. 

"Eeep!" says Joshua.

"Almost as good as a variety show," says Mrs McNaught.

"Acordó," agrees Señor Jesús Maria Medina, with his slow, sinful smile and his accent bright as copper coins. 

Joshua would flee the scene, but he's got one boot on and one off, so he glares instead, and finally Mr McNaught slaps Señor Rámon Ramírez on the back and says, "Well, Rámon, how about a little something before we get started," and everyone vanishes into the bar, except for Joshua, who would not enter into that den of iniquity if he was paid to do so by an angel of the Lord. He takes up his watch on the store porch instead, on watch, but is soon displaced by Miss Maybelline Jones in her best hat, putting the shutters up although it is only four o'clock. 

"Good afternoon, Joshua!" says Miss Maybelline. "How's life with the Lord today?"

"Hum-um," says Joshua.

"Glad to hear it," says Miss Maybelline. "Are you coming to the show tonight?"

"!" says Joshua.

"Don't be late!" says Miss Maybelline, and sashays into the bar with every cherry on her hat bouncing like the end days have come at last.

Which is how Joshua learns that not only has the devil come to town, he will be seducing everyone in earshot to the dark side at six o'clock sharp, down by the mill, where not only has the sheriff allowed it, half the deputies have built a stage ten times bigger than the pulpit. Joshua's there an hour before the flames start to burn, but almost every other person in Winona Springs has got there before him, with blankets and rugs and picnic baskets and flasks and lanterns, babies and grandpas, small dogs and big dogs and a canary in a cage. The smell of fried chicken and seasoned greens makes Joshua's stomach rumble, but just like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the Lord provides. 

"Hey, Joshua! There's a plate here for you if you're hungry!" 

Thank you, Lord. He scrapes the plate clean. By the time he's finished, evening's falling around him, lit by the flames of half a hundred lanterns, just like a window into hell, with the biggest portal of all the wide, empty floor of the stage. 

The devil steps out. The devil wears a black hat and a scarlet mask and a shirt embroidered with butterflies which, in the light from the lanterns, look as if they might take flight across his broad shoulders. He's cleaned his boots, and he's holding his guitar. 

"Howdy," he says. 

"You might know this one," he says.

"I see a couple of fiddles out there. Y'all welcome to join in," he says. His eyes are smiling. He taps his foot a couple of times, runs his fingers over the fretboard, and then he hits the first chord, and everyone except Joshua opens their mouths and sings right alongside him, like they're in church except... bouncier. It is an ungodly noise, loud as bells, and it takes ahold of Joshua's feet without his say-so, so each of them taps away to the rhythm of it, and then it grabs his hands and sets them clapping, like David before the Ark of the Lord, seized by the spirit. It takes the devil no more than two minutes to take a hold of Mandy MacDowell's soul and pull her and her fiddle right up on stage, and her father after her, the pair of them sawing away devilish in tune and indecently on the beat. And after them goes Pastor John with his squeeze-box - Pastor John! - although Joshua never quite trusted Pastor after the sermon of the Woman at the Well, and now he knows he was right. The sound they make is ungodly and wicked, seductive as a serpent, winding around all the townsfolk, pulling them up onto their feet and setting them dancing.

Song after song they sing, some of them new and some of them old, and every one of them with a story to tell like the devil sets his hooks in a man's mind and sets him thinking. They play until Joshua's feet are sore with dancing and sweat rolls down the back of his neck, until his throat is sore with yelling and his heart is so light it could fly up to the moon, which just goes to show that his mama was right; the devil has all best tunes. Joshua sins, over and over again. 

When they stop, he sighs right alongside everyone else. The moon is full out, and the sky behind the lanterns has been full dark for hours. The horses are all dozing, and most of the children are asleep, wrapped up in blankets under the trees, but the townsfolk have been driven to damnation by the devil: they clap and cheer and shout for more, so that the devil bows his head. The devil's fingers are sore, which Joshua knows because he has wormed his way to the front so that he can be watchful for the Lord, and the devil is sweating through his butterfly shirt, as if the stage isn't hot enough for him, used as he must be to the fires of hell. 

"You want more?" says the devil. He turns right around, so that they can all see the scarlet wings across his back, and Pastor and the MacDowells nod back at him. Mr MacDowell has a stool, but Maddie MacDowell and Pastor are standing on their own two feet, smiling.

"Well, hell," says the devil, and shrugs. "I'm game if you are." He tosses back the fringes of his mask, so that for one moment Joshua can see his wide, pink mouth, and then his fingers take up the tune and his voice follows after and his face is a hidden sin all over again.

Even the devil, though, has his limits. Salvation does come for Joshua. It comes when his throat is hoarse and his feet blistered, when his palms ache and his face hurts with smiling, when he is most susceptible to the wicked, cruel possibilities of sinning. 

Dawn, at last, colours the sky behind the hills, clear and plain, so that the stars are still twinkling even as the sun creeps over the horizon. And down from the hills comes a man, on a horse. The devil, who has been playing slower and slower into the dawn, stops playing altogether. 

The devil says, "Thank you." He says, "Well, folks, that's a wrap. Sleep tight. Until next time." He shakes hands with Pastor, and Mr MacDowell, and he hugs Miss MacDowell and lifts her right off the stage and spins her round. Then he claps all the folks who came to listen, with his sore, bleeding fingers.

So pretty much everyone claps the devil one last time, and then they collapse down on the ground right where they are, which mean Joshua can see the man riding down from the hills. He is a tall, lanky man, with emphatic eyebrows, sitting on a appaloosa pony with a fancified harness. The morning breeze ripples through the pony's mane and tail as it arches its neck, ears pricked. They'd look like a graven idol, except that the man's boots are worn, and his gloves worked to the shape of his hands. 

He speaks to the devil. He says, "Missed you at breakfast, Orville Peck."

Mr Orville Peck sets down his guitar. He sets it down very carefully, as if it's breakable, although a guitar that outlasted the night is as breakable as a granite tombstone with an angel on top. 

He says, "It's good to see you, Dellwood D'Orly." 

Then he walks right up to the man on the pony, and tips up his head, and the man on the pony leans down, and if it wasn't for their hats Joshua is pretty darn sure they'd be kissing on each other right out in first light, mask and all, straight in front of God. And then they slap each other on the back a few times, like manly men. Mr Orville Peck whistles up his pony, and she trots over just as if she's a herd dog, and swear to heaven, when he levers himself up into the saddle she bends a knee to help. He picks up his guitar and straps it onto his back and dips his hat, and then he and Mr Dellwood D'Orly ride off into the dawn. 

And that, that's the story of how the devil came to Winona Springs.


End file.
